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War Hero

The Toryograph dislikes the Euro. Poking holes in the admitedly dodgy Irish and Portugese states and forecasting doom. Also that the Germans wont put up with it and may get stropy. Nothing new or exciting here. It might happen. Or it might not.

LE

The Creditanstalt (CA) was an Austrian bank. The Creditanstalt was based in Vienna, founded 1855 as K. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (approximately translated as: Imperial royal privileged Austrian Credit-Institute for Commerce and Industry) by the Rothschild family. Being very successful it became the largest bank of Austria-Hungary. It declared bankruptcy on May 11, 1931. It has been said that this event resulted in a global financial crisis and ultimately the bank failures of the Great Depression.[1] The bank was ultimately rescued by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Rothschilds and merged with the Wiener Bankverein, thus changing its name to Creditanstalt-Bankverein.

After World War II the bank was nationalised, and became mainly a commercial bank and highly involved in Austria's economy, holding stakes in important Austrian companies such as Wienerberger, Steyr-Daimler-Puch, Lenzing AG and Semperit.

In 1997 the state owned shares were sold to Bank Austria (BA), resulting in a crisis in the ruling coalition between SPÖ und ÖVP, since Creditanstalt had to be considered part of the conservative sphere of influence, whereas BA with its roots as Vienna's Central Savings Bank (Zentralsparkasse) was considered standing politically left. The merger was not finished until 2002, with the creation of Bank Austria Creditanstalt, which became part of the German HypoVereinsbank (HVB) group. HVB has now been taken over by UniCredit.

LE

War Hero

Much more to the point than my translation. It does however remind me why I stopped reading any of our current 'Journalism' even the so called 'broadsheet' papers just print utter tosh these days. I mean more than they used to even.

LE

In layman terms, the southern countries of the EU, and Ireland and a couple of northern ones are financially****ed. The only people who are meant to be bailing them out is the European Central Bank (that great institution that Brussels thought would be as good but bigger than all the nation state central banks, such as the Bank of England for example. European Union now hangs on the fact that the ECB will be able to bail out all the nations that are in the EU and in the shit. The trouble is, the only way to do that is for the ECB to do what the US is doing, which is to print shit-loads of paper money to 'buy' the debts of these states, or get the richer nations like Germany, the UK and France to foot the bill. We're already exposed to a potential £7 billion just on the Ireland debacle however.

The pundits and the banks that got us all in the shit are saying that the ECB must man up and take the hit for all the countries being bankrupted by banks, and the ECB and the EU are saying that richer member states must man up and back up the ECB while it splashes photocopied money around the place, as well as the richer nations' money.

The richer nations are saying "****, we didn't sign up to this, and our people won't like bailing out the dagos. You know we said we wanted a United Europe, well, er, perhaps we could have a 'mostly united Europe' with all the bankrupt countries left in the shit while we move ahead. As for the little guys, ****'em, they can be the IMF's problem.".

Those who fully support an EU are confidently saying "Wibble" and "Hatstand", whilst those sucking on the tit of the EU are saying "Please sir, may I have some more", while the rich masters of the EU are saying "MORE!?!? MORE?!?!?!?!?!!?"

Those that have been against the idea of the EU from the get-go are saying "Told you so. Anyone got some spare wedge for an increased defence budget, it's looking like 1931 again, and Geert Wilders is Hitler".

The new coalition in the UK is saying "Thank **** that myopic scottish prick didn't actually sign us up to the Euro, or we'd be in the shit even more than we are. Now, let's pay these debts off uber-quick and talk to, let's see, who's got money . . . . . Aaah, Mr Wong, a pleasure, I'm sure, doooo come in."

LE

I recall reading somewhere that the Germans still have many Billions worth of DMarks under their beds as they had no real confidence in the EU thing, also, that all Euros are coded so you can take your Euro ball and strop off and refuse to play if you so decided.

LE

The Irish (and the Greeks) would be far better off outside the Euro, because then their currencies would adjust to a more sensible (i.e. lower) level in the market. Their imports would be more expensive, and their exports more competitive. This would allow their economy to start to recover. (A bit like ours has benefited from the fall in the value of the pound).

Unfortunately, there is no mechanism for leaving the Euro. In addition, Brussels doesn't want Greece/Ireland to leave the euro because that's the end of the move towards the 'United States of Europe'.

However, in any contest between politics and the markets, the markets generally win in the end. So Ireland won't be able to burrow money except at prohibitive rates - and will require an EU bale out. France and Germany don't like the fact that Irish taxes are lower than theirs, so the price of the bale out will be increases in Irish taxes to French/German levels. That's a big chunk of Irish sovereignty gone...

MIA

In layman terms, the southern countries of the EU, and Ireland and a couple of northern ones are financially****ed. The only people who are meant to be bailing them out is the European Central Bank (that great institution that Brussels thought would be as good but bigger than all the nation state central banks, such as the Bank of England for example. European Union now hangs on the fact that the ECB will be able to bail out all the nations that are in the EU and in the shit. The trouble is, the only way to do that is for the ECB to do what the US is doing, which is to print shit-loads of paper money to 'buy' the debts of these states, or get the richer nations like Germany, the UK and France to foot the bill. We're already exposed to a potential £7 billion just on the Ireland debacle however.

The pundits and the banks that got us all in the shit are saying that the ECB must man up and take the hit for all the countries being bankrupted by banks, and the ECB and the EU are saying that richer member states must man up and back up the ECB while it splashes photocopied money around the place, as well as the richer nations' money.

The richer nations are saying "****, we didn't sign up to this, and our people won't like bailing out the dagos. You know we said we wanted a United Europe, well, er, perhaps we could have a 'mostly united Europe' with all the bankrupt countries left in the shit while we move ahead. As for the little guys, ****'em, they can be the IMF's problem.".

Those who fully support an EU are confidently saying "Wibble" and "Hatstand", whilst those sucking on the tit of the EU are saying "Please sir, may I have some more", while the rich masters of the EU are saying "MORE!?!? MORE?!?!?!?!?!!?"

Those that have been against the idea of the EU from the get-go are saying "Told you so. Anyone got some spare wedge for an increased defence budget, it's looking like 1931 again, and Geert Wilders is Hitler".

The new coalition in the UK is saying "Thank **** that myopic scottish prick didn't actually sign us up to the Euro, or we'd be in the shit even more than we are. Now, let's pay these debts off uber-quick and talk to, let's see, who's got money . . . . . Aaah, Mr Wong, a pleasure, I'm sure, doooo come in."

Oh so true, but van rumpelstiltskin, the dishonorable Ms Ashton, the Kinnocks et al, will be accusing you of being a Nazi now for daring to be so cynical about their beloved gravy train, oops I meant EU!

Gordon Brown was only "Anti Euro" because of the animosity he had with the pro EU Tony Blair. You only have to look at Gordon's sale of gold, predominately to the Bundesbank to see that he was very helpful to our EU compatriots just before the floating of the Euro. Have a read of Andrew Rawnsley's book, 'The end of the Party' Penguin, ISBN 978-0-141-04614-3.

LE

I recall reading somewhere that the Germans still have many Billions worth of DMarks under their beds as they had no real confidence in the EU thing, also, that all Euros are coded so you can take your Euro ball and strop off and refuse to play if you so decided.

You can still change DM´s at the bank and there´s no time limit to changing them,some stores as a gimmick will also accept them;The exchange rate is the same as it was when the Euro came into use so has not gained in any value at all.It´s thought there are millions of DM´s still in Switzerland´s banks maybe but not in mattresses if somebody knows about them.There´s no point in keeping something that doesn´t increase in value and most of the DM´s in Switzerland belongs to Tax Dodgers.
Dm´s are still being burnt and there´s no warehouses full of them as another rumour bites the dust.Euro notes have 2 letters as a code to where they´re printed but this has absolutely nothing to do with the value of them and are issued to all EU countries regardless of origin.

LE

The Creditanstalt (CA) was an Austrian bank. The Creditanstalt was based in Vienna, founded 1855 as K. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (approximately translated as: Imperial royal privileged Austrian Credit-Institute for Commerce and Industry) by the Rothschild family. Being very successful it became the largest bank of Austria-Hungary. It declared bankruptcy on May 11, 1931. It has been said that this event resulted in a global financial crisis and ultimately the bank failures of the Great Depression.[1] The bank was ultimately rescued by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Rothschilds and merged with the Wiener Bankverein, thus changing its name to Creditanstalt-Bankverein.

Are you saying that the Rothschilds declared bankruptcy and then bailed their own bank out ? Also, if it was such a successful bank, how / why did it go bankrupt ?

Sorry but whilst I am a dummy when it comes to finance, when I see the Rothschild name, I always smell a rat !

LE

The Irish (and the Greeks) would be far better off outside the Euro, because then their currencies would adjust to a more sensible (i.e. lower) level in the market. Their imports would be more expensive, and their exports more competitive. This would allow their economy to start to recover. (A bit like ours has benefited from the fall in the value of the pound).

Unfortunately, there is no mechanism for leaving the Euro. In addition, Brussels doesn't want Greece/Ireland to leave the euro because that's the end of the move towards the 'United States of Europe'.

However, in any contest between politics and the markets, the markets generally win in the end. So Ireland won't be able to burrow money except at prohibitive rates - and will require an EU bale out. France and Germany don't like the fact that Irish taxes are lower than theirs, so the price of the bale out will be increases in Irish taxes to French/German levels. That's a big chunk of Irish sovereignty gone...

Even without the global financial crisis the Irish banks were most likely bust: very bad lending decisions built around wholly inappropriate Euro interest rates, huge domestic commercial and domestic property bubble, corrupt developers, excessive mortgage lending, stupid Government trying to big it up and weak Regulators.

Oh and the whole lot was propped up by foreign banks lending about 5x Irish GDP, so they may have created a home grown economic disaster but many others bought into it.